The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #117165 Message #3769995
Posted By: Steve Shaw
01-Feb-16 - 09:57 PM
Thread Name: Curly headed piccaninny
Subject: RE: Curly headed piccaninny
Well, dammit all, I've just sent the Paul Robeson version of Ma Curly-headed Baby to my son for our new grandson. My mum used to sing it to me sixty-odd years ago and it means a lot to me. There's a current thread about the song. I printed out the words for him. In looking for them I noticed that an awful lot of politically-correct revising has gone on down the years. As far as I'm concerned, daddy was in the cotton field workin' for de coon and it was to a little darkie baby. We admire Nic Jones's songs about whaling and we don't change the words or leave verses out. We sing old songs about men getting women in the club then abandoning them as if they'd done no harm, and songs about dirty old men climbing into the bedroom windows of sixteen-year-olds. We are not going to be depraved or corrupted because we know these songs are of their time. Trying to clean them up just looks a bit shabby. If there's the potential to offend by singing them in our own contexts, then we know what to do, don't we!